


you go on ahead

by somethingdifferent



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Post-Canon, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, anyway jj abrams can get fucked, basically i just wrote the fic i wanted to read, lol here's ur millionth fix it fic, lots of orpheus/eurydice vibes, this is more for me than it is for you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21921907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingdifferent/pseuds/somethingdifferent
Summary: “It could have been. If it was a house anymore. And I do know it already has a ghost hanging around.” He shrugs. “Or two. But, no, Rey, I don't think this house is haunted by anything but us.””Then I think -“ She pauses, not quite sure how to continue. “I think Ben might be stuck. Somewhere.”When she had kissed him, for the first time, for the last time, she felt something blooming in her chest. It felt like hope and trust and peace and love. It left her just as quickly, when his head cracked on the stone and his body faded before her eyes and the space in her heart where he used to be gaped open like the mouth of a snake, like a hole in the earth.She won’t let it happen again.[rey/ben; the millionth fix it post-tros fic]
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 28
Kudos: 325





	you go on ahead

He would like to come home naked   
without war paint on his face   
and appear before you virgin white   
if virgins are still chaste

SUNSET RUBDOWN

I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!

EMILY BRONTË

They visit sometimes. Finn, Poe, Rose, whoever they bring along with them, a collection of faces and names that Rey quickly forgets. She finds herself smiling often at people that she can’t recall meeting before; it becomes instinct to pretend like she knows them already, like they are all the best of friends.

Finn asks her once, the first time he comes to Tatooine, if she is okay - if she is happy.

”Of course,” she tells him. Its barely even a lie, at this point. She is used to being alone. She has long been used to it. She does not mark the days on the wall anymore, and they all bleed into each other, one into the next, and she is okay.

She hasn’t told him about Ben, but, then again, he's never asked.

After Exogol, she tries to grow plants: dried up little things, prickly, brown organisms that need no sustenance, that need nothing and want nothing. They die anyway. Nothing takes, no matter how much life she breathes into it, no matter how much water and light; nothing can dig in its roots. She asks Leia, the form of Leia, “What’s wrong with me?” But the older woman only smiles wanly, her eyes shiny and clear.

”Sometimes,” she says, “they just need some room to grow, alone. You don’t need to push so hard.”

Rey makes a noncommittal noise in her throat. She doesn’t stop overwatering them.

With the war over, with Finn and Poe leading the effort to reestablish some kind of civilization, she finds herself feeling somewhat useless, an appendix, an afterthought. When she told them her plan to leave for Luke’s home planet, Poe had clapped his hand on her back in camaraderie, wishing her luck in that easy, effortless way he had that always made her feel pathetic. Finn’s eyes had been full of confusion, then, after a moment, resignation.

Rey wonders if he can remember the feeling of sailing through the air, his body pummeled by water, the strength of her anger coursing through the space between them. She hadn’t been paying attention to him; her eyes had been on Ben, the red glow of his lightsaber twisting in his hands.

After she leaves to bury the Skywalker sabers, Rey stays on Tatooine longer than she’d planned to, setting up a lean-to in the crater where Luke’s home once stood. She feels a little silly, creating her own little shelter in the earth, exploring the nearby villages on foot or by speeder; at times, Luke will join her and BB-8 on their journeys into Mos Eisley, smirking gently at the myriad of changes he sees. “When I was your age,” he begins sometimes, but he never really knows how to continue.

Leia, for her part, speaks less often than Rey is used to, her presence calm and steady. She sits, at times, at the table when Rey eats. Out loud, she occasionally says, seemingly to herself, seemingly to the air around them, “Ben?”, her voice pitched high and wavering. As if something might be able to answer.

Rey shakes her head each and every time. She swallows her dinner around the lump in her throat.

”Can you feel him?” Rey asks in return, once.

Leia’s face is drawn, somber. She plays with the rings on her hand and shakes her head. “I don’t know where he is,” she says, and it sounds like a confession.

The third time Finn visits, Rey finally remembers to ask him about what he wanted to tell her. 

”Oh, it was nothing.” He won’t meet her eye, seeming embarrassed, and Rey doesn’t push it. She doesn’t want to. She can feel him reach out to her every once in a while when they’re separated, through the force. It’s clumsy, a frayed connection, an amateurish approximation of something that was second nature to her and Ben. Rey thinks of Ben's hand reaching toward her neck; she thinks of fruit spilling from a cut in the air, from nothing. Whenever Finn does manage to get close enough to communicate, he can never quite maintain it, leaving her alone again.

”So,” he asks, “when are you coming back?”

Rey doesn’t want to do him the disservice of lying, so she doesn’t answer. Instead, she changes the subject, gets him talking about the efforts to round up more defected storm troopers, and Finn launches into a description of his and Poe’s various plans. 

After he leaves, as his ship rises into the orange sky, Rey feels a jolt in the back of her skull, like the press of fingers to the nape of her neck. It passes as quickly as it comes, and Rey can feel again the open wound in her mind that hasn’t left since - since -

Rey shoves another wall around the empty space, feeling a little like she is packing a bleeding hole with gauze. She pretends it isn’t even there.

She wakes up one morning with a splitting headache, her throat dry and mouth cottony. She lays in bed for most of the day, sweat beading on her forehead, between her breasts. Rey tears her clothes off until she’s stripped down to her undergarments, the thin blanket beneath her gathering more sweat, sticking to her legs. She is curled up on her side, the occasional salt slick of a tear dripping down the bump of her nose. Luke and Leia, to their credit, don’t bother her.

_How are you feeling?_

The voice is so abrupt, so crystal clear, it makes Rey sit upright fast enough she hits her head on the low ceiling above her bed. Her whole body throbs in protest; in her mind, the wound bleeds through the stuffing.

”Ben?” The word is barely a whisper; she wonders if this is what it’s like, going crazy. She wonders if this is how it felt for Ben, all those years ago, all the voices running though his brain. She says again, a little louder, “Ben?”

But the only sound she hears this time is the ineffectual fan whirring lamely, the chirp of insects burrowing deeper into the sand, the distant humming of - of something _new_.

She doesn’t want to ask Luke about it, which is nothing new, really. Even when she hated Ben, even when he was someone she’d looked at with distrust, malice, hatred, she couldn’t bring herself to ask her Jedi master about the bond between them. Something had told her then it was a sore subject, his relationship with his nephew; something tells her nothing has really changed on that front.

For a while, the only voice she hears inside her skull is her own.

Around her, her plants keep dying, drowning in too much water, sinking into the wet clay of sand. Around her, the desert stretches so wide and vast she can’t help but think it must never end, and all of it is orange and red, burning hot as the twin suns overhead.

_I don’t know what’s happening._

The next time she hears the voice, it doesn’t sound like him at all. It’s the voice of a child now, a boy. He’s crying, his words thick with tears and fright.

“Ben?” Rey is hesitant this time, quiet and soft. She doesn’t want it to go away again. She focuses herself in the force, centering her mind. She's rewarded when the voice continues.

_I don’t know - I don’t know what’s happening to me._

Rey is opening her mouth, about to call out -

 _Ben._ This time, it’s not her voice that replies. It’s a woman’s, her tone stern but gentle. _Ben, I’m right here. I can’t help unless you tell me what’s going on._

_No! No, I don’t want to -_

_Ben, I can’t help you unless -_

_No! No!_ The child’s voice is pitched at a shriek; Rey thinks of a boy she saw at the market the other day, throwing his whole body on the ground over and over again. The scream grows in volume, the syllable repeated louder and louder, until she nearly claws at her eardrums to drown it out.

 _Okay, fine!_ The woman finally screams in reply. Then, a breath, and calmer, _Fine. Alright, Ben._

The voices stop as suddenly as they started, and Rey is in silence once more.

”Do you think -“ Rey pauses, takes a breath. Across from her, Leia sits solemnly, her body clear and light blue. Eerie. Rey had never seen a force ghost before Luke, and even after all she’s seen, it’s still a difficult sight to grow accustomed to. She forges on, determined. “Have you ever heard of - I don’t know. Hearing a vision, instead of seeing it? Or, no, not a vision, exactly. A me-“

”A memory?” Leia adjusts her posture, sitting up taller. Rey wonders idly if she can feel the space around her, if she can feel the hard press of the chair on her spine. “Whose memory do you think you might be hearing?”

Rey fidgets a little, hedges her bets. “Ben’s,” she admits.

Leia’s face is, for a moment, so heartbreakingly sad that Rey nearly has to look away, feeling like an intruder, spying on a private moment. The next moment, her expression is smooth again, placid. “Do you know what he was like as a child, Rey?” Leia doesn’t wait for an answering before continuing, her voice gravel and smoke, brimming with something like love. Or regret. “Such a wonderful boy. So smart, from the day he was born. But exhausting, goodness, he was exhausting. He’d have these awful, awful tantrums. Screaming, wailing, crawling all over the floor. He was a lovely boy, but he was really a handful. It was so tiring. I was really - I was so tired sometimes.”

Leia is quiet for a moment. Rey can see the weariness turning down the corners of her mouth, her eyes cast down. The wound in Rey’s mind is - it’s not quite so open for a second. But only for a second.

”What did you hear?” Leia asks after a while.

Rey clears her throat. “I think,” she says, the words coming slowly, “I think I heard - both of you.”

It becomes the scratches on her wall, the voices. She keeps a record of them with metal and a pocket knife, feeling like a child again. Her mother's face flashes in her memory each time she uses it, and Rey suppresses the instinct to scream, the instinct to hate. She centers herself and strips metal from her wall.

Sometimes the voice she hears is Luke, or Han, the familiarity of their rumbling words pricking tears in her eyes. Sometimes it’s him, a child again, his mother consoling him. Sometimes, it’s Kylo Ren. Sometimes, it's Ben.

Once, it’s her.

Rey is scrubbing the metal bed frame with sand and water, cleaning off the dust and grime, when she hears her own words echoing in the space around her.

_I’ve never felt so alone._

Her breath catches somewhere in her throat. And there is his voice in reply, she knows it by now, has imprinted it in her blood, in her bones: _you’re not alone._

All too soon, his voice is gone, and Rey can feel herself scrambling, she is reaching out, insensibly, ridiculously, with her mind and with her hands. “No, wait,” she says, her fingers clutching the air, her vision blurring, “come back!” But he doesn’t.

And for the first time in months, for the first time since she held his body, since she held his soul, already slipping away, in her hands, Rey sinks to the ground from the weight of it all and cries.

Inside her, in her head, in her chest, in her heart, there is a space, a cavity where something used to be. Maybe it was Ben. Or the knowledge of Ben. Or his heart and hers, together, both cleaved in two. Rey presses her fingers to the space between her ribs hard enough to bruise and doubles over, trying to plug the space back up with cotton, with stuffing, with gauze, but knowing it won't be. No matter how much she tries to put back in, it still won't be full.

After her tenth plant in a row shrivels and withers and dies, Rey promises herself she will try only one more time. Just one more.

She finds her last plant at a vegetable stall in town. It’s thin, but seems determined to stay upright. She takes it back to where she’s been staying and sets it up half in sunlight, half in shadow. She convinces herself not to water it right away, to let it sit, get used to it’s new home.

”Don’t worry, little thing,” she murmurs, mostly to herself. “I won’t let you die.”

 _Wish you could’ve said the same for me._ The words are said wryly, self-deprecating in a way that’s all too -

Rey raises her head and there’s nothing there and what was she really expecting? Ben standing in front of her, alive and whole and perfect -

 _How are you feeling?_ the voice whispers. It sounds like it’s coming from all around her, filling up her mind. The wound is - not exactly closed, but the shape of it is different. New.

For a moment, Rey can’t speak, can’t think. _It’s not a memory._ “You’re not a memory,” she murmurs.

 _Of course not._ She can hear the smirk in his voice, and it makes her lips quirk up, it makes a gasp catch in her chest. _But that’s beside the point. I asked you how you’re -_

”I’m okay,” she forces out. Rey blinks once, then again. “I’m -“

_Don’t do that._

Rey manages a scoff at that. Her lips twist further up, in a facsimile of a smile. “Do what?”

_Don’t pretend. Not with me._

She decides to ignore that, rolling her eyes. Insufferable. “Where are you?”

 _Ah yes. There it is. The million credit question. You know -_ he pauses then, as if he might be looking around to confirm what he says - _I’m not sure myself. I think -_

Rey waits for a moment, straining her ears, trying to pick out his voice over the sound of the insects. “Ben?”

This time, he doesn’t answer. But, for a moment, the smile doesn’t leave her face.

”Do you think this house is haunted?”

Luke grins. “It could have been. If it was a house anymore. And I do know it already has a ghost hanging around.” He shrugs. “Or two. But, no, Rey, I don't think this house is haunted by anything but us.”

”Then I think -“ She pauses, not quite sure how to continue. “I think Ben might be stuck. Somewhere.”

Luke’s jaw tightens. “Rey,” he says, too calmly, as if he were explaining it to a child, “Ben died. You saw him die.”

”I saw him fade away, into nothing. And we haven't seen him. Leia can't feel him. He's missing. Don’t you see? He’s not a ghost like you, he's not gone. He’s this - thing all around this place. I can hear his life, sometimes he can even speak to me. I think he’s still alive somehow, that his life force is still present. He’s lost, and he needs a way to get back. I need to help him get back. Or -“ Rey has to stop, the words strangling in her throat. She takes a breath and finishes in one rush of air, “He has to come back or I don’t know what I’ll do.”

Luke stares at her for a long moment. She remembers, suddenly, something she heard a week or so before. _You need to learn some self control, or you will never be the person you want to be._ “You have the texts, don’t you,” he says gruffly. “Why don’t you get started.”

She woke up in his arms.

He died in hers.

Which, as they say, was the end of the story.

Only, not really.

The next time she hears his voice, she can see him too, only for a minute.

He doesn’t look like Luke or Leia. He looks completely solid, his cheeks flushed pink, wearing the clothes he died in. She can still see the hole in his sweater where she stabbed him, and the incongruity of it makes her freeze as she looks at him. He seems to be gasping for air when he appears in front of her, his hands on his knees as he struggles to catch his breath.

 _I’ve been walking,_ he says. It sounds like he is speaking to her from across an ocean, his voice barely stronger than a whisper. _I can’t stop fucking walking._

When Rey blinks, he’s gone again.

There was a story someone told her about following directions, years ago. The people of Jakku were a little kinder to her when she was a child, but not by much. She still feels it in her heart, those bursts of anger, of genuine hate, for her parents. For leaving her all alone. She understands them now, but she can’t help but think of Ben’s words: _they sold you for drinking money_. She can’t help but think of how easily they let her go, more concerned with saving their own skins.

It was an old story they told her, about a man and a woman and death sitting between them, about the quick flash of a snake’s jaw, snapping shut, about walking and walking and walking underground, about music and light, about following directions, about a field of flowers. 

The moral of the story was: you can’t cheat death.

Rey thought it was likely more practical to say: you at least shouldn’t look behind you if you’re trying to.

_I’ll come back for you, sweetheart. I promise._

It’s Luke’s voice - only it must be Han’s - her father’s - Ben’s -

“I’ll come back for you,” Rey whispers to herself. Beside her, she watches her plant tilt slowly toward the sun.

It takes her months before she can find anything giving the slightest hint about it: the world between worlds. It takes even longer to figure out who could help her get there, who could help bring him back.

Finn visits her a few times when she’s still working on it, pages and pages of ancient writings, Jedi and otherwise, plastered all over the floors, the walls. He brings Rose with him, once, his hand on the small of her back. Rey stares at it for a moment too long, and she won’t think of how Ben led her to Snoke in that room, she won’t.

”Are you okay?” Finn asks her, his tone edging past gentle concern and well into worry. She can see it in his eyes: _well, she's gone completely off the rails_.

”Not at all,” Rey replies, grinning brightly, a little manically. “But I fucking will be.”

Rose’s face breaks out into a smile. She looks so beautiful for a moment that Rey wants to wrap her arms around her and never let go. Rose takes Rey's hand in her own and nods. “That’s my girl," she says.

In the end, it’s just walking.

Rey walks into the world between worlds armed with little more than her yellow saber, a spark of green clutched tight in her fist, a spark of green that took her too long to find. Around her it is black, still and silent. In the end, it’s just walking: Rey in front, and Ben trailing slowly behind. She can’t hear his footfalls, can’t glance to see his face. She focuses on each step, on walking to the light.

If you’re going to cheat death, after all, you shouldn’t look behind you.

When she had kissed him, for the first time, for the last time, she felt something blooming in her chest. It felt like hope and trust and peace and love. It left her just as quickly, when his head cracked on the stone and his body faded before her eyes and the space in her heart where he used to be gaped open like the mouth of a snake, like a hole in the earth.

She won’t let it happen again.

Rey doesn’t let herself turn around once, not even when she finally makes it back to her shelter, not even when she sinks to her knees in the sand. She doesn’t turn and look until the moment he touches his fingers to the curve of her spine. When she finally allows herself to see his face, she hardly can with all the tears spilling down her cheeks. She could hold an ocean in her, for all the water she lets fall into the sand. She feels Ben swipe a tear from under her eye as he kneels in front of her, and it only makes her cry harder, her face crumpling like paper.

"Sweetheart," he says, and it's _his_ voice, she can hear it, she can hear _him_ , "don't cry. Please."

Rey lets out a sound that's somewhere between a sob and a gasp and finally, _finally_ , she presses her body to his, her face buried in his chest. Ben holds her in her arms like he can’t bring himself to let go. She can feel his face falling against her shoulder; she can feel how he wets her skin with salt water and sweat.

Rey curls her fingers around the back of his neck and squeezes her eyes shut and hopes and hopes and hopes.

”Rey,” he mumbles into her hair. “Rey.”

This time, when she kisses him, it doesn't feel like an ending. It feels like something completely _new_.

She doesn't let him out of her sight for a while. Luke and Leia seem to have made themselves scarce, and that's fine by her, and fine by Ben, too, judging by how he practically chains her to the bed the first few days.

The first time, he has to make her slow down, his hands holding her hips in place as she squirms against him. "Easy, easy." The smile on his face is still so new to her, so brilliant and lovely and sweet she has to trace it with her fingertips to make sure it's real. "We've got time."

When he's finally inside of her, Ben can't seem to say anything at all. He presses a kiss to her open mouth before he starts to move, and it's different, it feels strange and different and horrible and wonderful. It feels like she is entirely complete, for the first time. The empty spaces in her aren't mended - it's like they were never there to begin with. 

"Do you think it'll last?" She whispers it late that night, in the dark, lying next to him. She's curled up on her side, naked on top of the thin blankets. "Do you think you might have to go back, someday?"

Ben is already shaking his head before the sentence fully leaves her. "Not until I'm ready to go," he says, and he sounds so confident, so absolutely certain, Rey can't help but believe him. Ben looks at her and grins, his eyes shining with the light of the moon. "Someone will have to drag me away."

The living things on Tatooine are strange creatures, things that move and things that grow roots and things that swallow and things that consume and things that sharpen to a fine point and things as soft as feathers. The last plant Rey bought in Mos Eisley blooms for the first time on the morning that she and Ben gather their belongings together into his father's ship, and it's even stranger and more beautiful than she could have imagined: the velvety softness of its petals, the fragrance of its seeds.

Ben convinces her to leave it behind. "Let it grow in its home," he tells her. He squints, lifting his hand to his eye to shield it from the suns. He smiles softly, seeing the slight frown on her face. "There will be plenty in the gardens on Naboo," he reassures her. "Everything there is green."

Rey nods, tearing her eyes away from the crater still dug deep in the sand. She looks up at Ben and grins. "Let's get a move on, then."

She follows him onto the ship, letting him lead her by the hand. She doesn't glance behind.


End file.
